


The glitz and the glitter

by lbmisscharlie



Category: Bomb Girls
Genre: Confusion, F/F, Pride Parades, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-14 04:54:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7154417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lbmisscharlie/pseuds/lbmisscharlie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“They’re so – sparkly,” Betty says. It doesn’t really encompass it all. Gladys has seen operas and worn cocktail gowns dripping in beads; she’s gone out to see war bond shows with their high-kicking show girls and has, once, snuck into a gentlemen’s club. She knows from glitter, and she’s never quite seen anything like this extravaganza of skin, sparkle, and marabou.</i>
</p>
<p>Betty and Gladys get themselves knocked into the 21st century, and fall right smack in the middle of a Pride parade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The glitz and the glitter

The throbbing in her head seems to pulse outward from her very veins, threatening to burst. Reaching one hand up, she rubs at her eye socket, which is gritty and dry. Sand? She blinks her eyes open – too bright – blinks them closed. 

A groan next to her. “Jesus,” Betty’s voice creaks, sounding as dry as her eyes feel. “I don’t think that went well, Princess.”

Gladys groans and tries blinking again. Everything is still too-shiny and fractured. “Only minutely,” she says, squinting.

“I thought you could ride a motorcycle without tipping us over.” Betty sounds peevish. 

“I can,” Gladys protests. A shadow looms into her vision; she squeezes one eye shut, squints. Betty’s face, above her, comes into focus. She looks annoyed. “In theory,” Gladys adds; Betty raises an eyebrow. Gladys reaches up to brush away the grit that still sticks to her eyelashes. 

“Are you hurt?” Betty’s fingertips hover somewhere over her cheekbone, not touching, the space between their skin full of maintained caution. Gladys licks her lips. Her mouth is dry.

“No,” she says. Her head throbs and beneath her, the ground is hard – too hard, in fact. Bracing her palms, she sits up.

The heavy thrum of a motor rumbles near them, but that is not what she notices first.

Scrambling to her feet, Gladys grapples for Betty, who follows more slowly, still watching her cautiously. “What –” She isn’t – she can’t – 

The ground beneath her feet isn’t the dry gravel of the back road where Betty had revved up the motor of the motorcycle she’d borrowed from a guy on warehouse shifts at VicMu and pulled them away from the city, Gladys’s hands gripping tight to her hips. It’s hard concrete, a most average-looking sidewalk on a smallish, average-looking street. But down the way, glimpsed between the vertical rises of the buildings, there’s such a crush of people that she doesn’t know what she’s seeing.

“Some kinda parade,” Betty says, but her usual dry pragmatism has leached out of her words. They don’t often see public parades with quite so much _skin._

Grabbing Betty’s elbow, Gladys drags them both forward, until they emerge from the side street to be hit by a shocking ray of sun, made brighter by the way it glints and reflects off the dancing, gyrating bodies making their way down the street in a crush.

“They’re so – sparkly,” Betty says. It doesn’t really encompass it all. Gladys has seen operas and worn cocktail gowns dripping in beads; she’s gone out to see war bond shows with their high-kicking show girls and has, once, snuck into a gentlemen’s club. She knows from glitter, and she’s never quite seen anything like this extravaganza of skin, sparkle, and marabou. 

And the _sound_ , gosh. More laughter than she’s heard in all the months since war was declared. Betty grips Gladys’s hand, tucked in the crook of her elbow. 

A person in architecturally impossible heels and a very bright red wig gestures to them. “I love it; very vintage femme chic.” A deep, throaty laugh, and the person is off again, dancing adeptly down the street.

“Did – did – did she call me _femme_?” Betty spits the word, frowning with all of the swagger she has learned so hard to conceal.

“Nothing wrong with being a femme,” Gladys says mildly. She’s never had much patience for the unspoken regulations at the women-only dance nights they go to sometimes. They neither of them quite fit in, though she’s seen the jealous way Betty’s eyes linger on the boldest bulldaggers, in their broad-cut suits. 

Betty scoffs, but it’s all fine. They’re both in trousers, in fact, Betty’s hair still pinned up under a cheerful red scarf and Gladys’s blouse a casual floral muslin. Her lipstick is probably smeared, now, if not rubbed off entirely, from the way Betty had pressed up against her as they sat on the picnic blanket and kissed her and kissed her. 

They step forward, pressing a little closer into the crowd. This can’t possibly be the same place they left; Gladys cranes her head up to see the buildings rise into the clouds and feels the happy thrum of people all around her. That convinces her more than anything that the impossible has happened; back home, this happiness is unthinkable right now.

“I don’t think –” she says in Betty’s ear. 

Betty turns her head, shouts, “What?”

“I don’t think this is home,” Gladys says, louder, half to Betty’s ear and half to her cheek. 

“You think, Princess?” Betty shakes her head. “I sure as hell don’t know what’s happening, but it’s not where we were.” She doesn’t sound scared; Betty’s good at brave faces, but she’s never been able to hide her fear from Gladys. 

Gladys starts to respond, when the thundering roar of engines cuts her off. Coming up the block, a wide regiment of shining black motorcycles follows a line of people dancing in nothing but very small, very shiny gold shorts and some carefully placed tape. As it comes closer, Gladys starts to make out the riders: women with thin, sinewy muscles or bulky, broad arms; women with wide aviator sunglasses and leather jackets; women with bandanas wrapped around their foreheads and leather straps around their wrists. 

Most ride two-up, bodies pressed hard and close together so no sunlight glimmers between them. Some hold their hands on their partner’s hips and others snake their hands lower, down onto their thighs. 

She can feel Betty take a deep, ragged breath, can feel the press of her ribcage against Gladys’s arm where it’s tucked in close. The motorcycles come in rows and rows, a whole cavalcade. Gladys watches one woman lean in close to her partner, press her mouth to the skin right behind her ear, and she feels her body go hot and flushed. 

Leaning over and turning her head, Gladys presses a quick kiss to Betty’s cheek, feeling daring and sharp. Betty turns her head; her eyes are huge, shining. Gladys tucks them close together until they touch from shoulder to ankle, and doesn’t want to move. 

“Gosh,” Gladys says, mouth pressed right against Betty’s temple. Under her lips, Betty’s skin is warm and damp with a glimmer of sweat. 

“I think I’d like to try riding that motorcycle with you again.”


End file.
